Grades and Education Philosophies

I have begun to apply for several teaching positions, and I have been thinking about how my grading philosophy can make a big difference for me as a first year teacher. As many of us are teaching in LPS, we all know about formative and summative. In middle school, summative makes 100% of a student's grade. Formative is seen as the practice before the big performance. At first I was a bit uneasy about this approach because I can see how students who won't do the formative work because it doesn't affect their grade, which I have several students who follow this. Formative seemed to be an enabling of student's not doing their homework, but I have come to realize how students need to do formative in order to successfully do the summative assignments.

I also see how formative grading causes students to have both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for their work. Many times we see students doing the work to get the grade, not to necessarily learn the material. I am constantly trying to get my students to slow down and thoughtful approach the assignment. However, I know many of my students have "instantaneous" mindsets about how things should be done with doing the work, getting the grade, and moving on. However, with formative assignments not making a grade, students have to make up their minds about how well they are going to do the assignment. This is where I can see the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations coming into play; however, you have to really explain to students how formative informs our summative grades.

As I begin to look at other schools, I have realized that not all schools use this grading process and in LPS high schools, it's an 80/20 split for the grade. So how do you implement your grading philosophy into the established grading process at your school? Obviously, you can't demand the change your first year, but perhaps after some time spent in the school, you can become an agent for change. However, I am a supporter of formative/summative, but I know that with not all schools using this form of grading, I need to be able to apply my philosophy accordingly. My first thought was using the 80/20 split; yet, how do you make sure your grade book isn't inundated with points?

I realize not all things done in class will have grades, but trying to modify a student's understanding of grades and the usefulness of doing assignments that aren't graded seems to be a constant battle. How do you enforce this necessity of doing assignments without a grade? Currently, I have been reading The Island on Bird Street by Uri Olvea with my students. We have reading guides that group two chapters together, plus 4 sticky notes to monitor their reading. My students constantly ask if this is going to be graded or if I am going to pick them up. However, having 150 worksheets passed in/back everyday uses valuable time. I know that these questions are helpfully for not only reading comprehension, but many of the questions are applicable to their final project, which is a character analysis for the book's main character. Still my students find that unless the assignment is graded, it isn't worth their time to do. It's frustrating at times, but I also know that school may times enforces this mentality. What are some ways you have tried to fight this mentality?

The "Talk"

Yesterday I had the "talk" with my students. My students had become completely inappropriate and disrespectful while we were discussing a serious moment from Night, Elie Wiesel's personal account about the Holocaust and time spent in Auschwitz/Birkenau and Buna concentration camps. Usually my students work well with the serious material in the text; however, yesterday it got out of control. They began making light of the moment and sometimes that is needed to help my student cope with the material. Still there is a point where it becomes inappropriate and when students are talking over each other, over me, and being disrespectful, it must be addressed.

I knew I would have to have the "respect talk" eventually with at least one of my classes, yet I didn't anticipate having it with my Diff. students. Our talk took place at a perfect time, right before lunch. So we were all able to walk away from our serious talk and I could walk away from being the mean teacher. This talk made me feel uncomfortable because it wasn't one I ever wanted to have with my students, especially with this class. Yet, I appreciate having this moment with my students. I didn't yell or even raise my voice. I talked calmly and evenly to explain my disappointment and knew that I wouldn't have to discuss this again with them because they were capable of conducting themselves accordingly, as they have done so before. It was a great "teachable" moment because I had students come up to me and thank me for taking charge of the chaos and re-establishing the expectations of the classroom. Today a student even gave me a little thank you card for always being respectful to my students and for treating them as adults, not ever raising my voice, and for pushing them to be better people.

As I reflect back on this moment, I feel I was able to show my students that I am serious about not only the material, but their development as people. To me, I proved that I will be their teacher, mentor, and that I will always try my best to maintain the learning environment for each of them. My CT wasn't in the room when this episode unfolded, but she was happy that I stood my ground, re-established the classroom climate, and when the students came back, I went forward with the "business as usual" mentality after lunch. It feels as if I was officially inducted as a teacher. But we can't always act without letting our emotions get in the way. How do we maintain a healthy balance between our head and our heart? How do we maintain a level-head when our students don't act appropriately or when we are at our rope's end? Can we not let such experiences effect the learning environment by placing an elephant in the room or clouding our thoughts about the class and making it difficult from them to change this opinion we have of them?